The killing code: strange symbols in a WA settler's diaries lay bare frontier atrocities

The Guardian

3 days ago

Exclusive: Stories of murders passed down by Yamatji elders are confirmed by a cipher hidden in the 1850s journals of prominent Western Australian pastoralist Major Logue. Now descendants on both sides want to break the shame and silence
• Read more from Guardian Australia's series The Descendants here
Warning: This article contains historical records that use racist and offensive language, and descriptions of events that will be distressing to some readers
It's early morning in the Battye library in Perth, Western Australia, and we're scrolling through microfilm pages of the diary of a prominent and powerful colonist called Major Logue.
Logue kept the diary for 50 years, until his death in 1900. He wrote in it almost every day. Entries are written in looping script, sometimes neat and measured, other times messy and cramped. Pages are peppered with sketches of horses and faces, designs for a house, mud maps, lists of crops and stock. It's all fairly mundane. Most entries simply recount the work done on the farm by Logue and his men: fences mended, potatoes planted, cattle lost and found. Major Logue
There is some sort of code hidden in the diary, Guardian Australia has been told. But we're not sure what to look for. The microfilm machine we're using to view it is an analogue artefact. It's hooked up to a computer so we can adjust light and contrast and take screenshots. It's already crashed several times.
To view each page we wind the film gently from one side of the light box to the other. The machine takes a while to pull each one into focus. Even so, some of the writing is impossible to read. The ink on the page has faded with age and the photographs are grainy. The diary was copied to film in the 1950s and has lain undisturbed on the public catalogue ever since.
But then, suddenly, there it is. A line of strange, angular symbols slips on to the screen. As the years spin by – 1851, 1852, 1853 – the code, a series of right-angled shapes, some with dots, appears more frequently.
It stands out. If Logue used it to hide something, he failed. It's easier to make out than his handwriting.
There's one person who knows for sure what it says, and we're going to Geraldton, about 400km north of Perth, to meet her.
She has spent the past several years removing this code – and what she knows it says – from Logue's diaries to prepare them for publication.
The strange symbols represent a horrific story buried in the banality of early colonial farm life. It is the story of murder and massacre, of a family divided, of shame and fear and the shattering of colonial silence. ****
Major Logue was an early settler of Western Australia.
Born in Ireland, the young Major – his given name, not a military title – arrived in the colony as a child and acquired pastoral property near Geraldton in 1850. Landed and respectable, he served in the state's Legislative Council from 1870 to 1874 as the first MP for Geraldton.
That's the official version.
Logue was also a killer of Aboriginal people. But he hid his exploits in this diary that has remained secret – until now.
He wrote about who he killed, where, when and how, using the code.
On 16 March 1852 Logue wrote that some cattle went missing, so he ' S H O T T H R E E O F T H E M F O R I T . '
Logue was not alone in this endeavour. On 24 March he wrote that the 'natives at Mr Burgess' had been stealing sheep A N D T H A T T H E W H I T E F E L L O W S H A D S H O T S E V E R A L O F T H E M F O R I T .'
On 4 April he was among a group of armed men who set out to find 'natives who had taken the cattle'.
Started after breakfast and accompanied by Carsons we pushed in search of the natives who had taken the cattle saw smoke about 2 miles from Walkaway reached within a mile of it… proceeded from a native encampment tied up our horses in a thicket as the [ground] was very rough and crawled on our hands and knees within 200 yards when the natives saw us and scattered
F I R E D B O T H B A R R E L S O F M Y G U N A N D W O U N D E D O N E F E L L O W I N T H E R U M P . T H O M S O N A N D D I C K Y S H O T O N E D E A D
There are 11 coded diary entries between 1851 and 1853 that describe shooting and killing people; witnessing others in his employ doing the shooting; going on a 'campaign' to kill natives; and later riding over the 'battlefield' and seeing the bodies of those he had killed lying dead or 'hastily buried'.
By his own account he was part of groups who shot and killed at least 19 Yamatji people around what is now called Ellendale, Walkaway and the Greenough River.
On 23 June, 1852, Logue wrote that he had been part of a party who killed three Yamatji people.
Wednesday started after breakfast and [Karney] and I [went round] on our side of the [tracks] Menzies and Norries took the other after a couple of hours tracking we met at an appointed place and were all equally puzzled by the number of tracks [travelling] in every direction. Tom [Karney] returned home and we went on toward the flats to see whether we could find where the cattle had finally gone at [noon/nine] being on a hill we saw a fire at a distance and supposing it to be an encampment of natives we kept ourselves out of sight of it and rode round to try and get close and [obtain] some information from the natives concerning the cattle. Saw some natives
A N D R O D E A T T H E M R E C T O R S H I E D A N D P U T H I S F O O T I N A H O L E A N D F E L L C R U S H I N G M Y L E F T H A N D A N D K N E E A N D K N O C K I N G T H E C A P O F F M Y P I S T O L C A U G H T R E C T O R A N D G A V E C H A S E T O A N I G G E R A P P L I E D P I L L M E N Z E S A N D N A R R I E R D I D F O R 2 M O R E
Lost my helmet trying to stop some of the natives to enquire about the cattle. Returned toward Glengary Called at the sheep station and heard that the natives had stolen some [fillies] got to Glengary at dusk Kenneth was at home Gregory had been there and was expected next morning on his way to Perth heard that Thomson had been [kicking] up a [indecipherable] about my having taken a horse and same had heard that the [indecipherable] had been found on the [Arwin]
Two days later he described a 'battlefield'.
The original large leather-bound ledgers have been in the private collection of a descendant, who declined to speak on the record. But they were loaned for copying to the State Library of Western Australia in 1955 and have been available for public reading in the stacks of the Battye library ever since.
Some of Logue's other descendants, and those of other colonist families in the Geraldton region, have spoken to Guardian Australia. They want to break the silence surrounding their ancestors' involvement in frontier violence. They have begun meeting with the Yamatji descendants of the survivors.
Australia's archives contain many colonial diaries. They are how we are able to understand just how widespread frontier murders and massacres were; how commonplace it was among colonists to shoot and kill Aboriginal men, women and children on sight, for no reason and without consequences.
What makes Logue's diaries unique is that he wrote about these exploits using code at a time when such killings were frowned upon by colonial society. And, because he kept those diaries for 50 years from his arrival in the Geraldton region until his death, we can see how he materially benefited from those killings. Historian Nan Broad at Greenough Museum, south of Geraldton A 'pathetically simple' code
A Geraldton-based historian and author, Nan Broad, has spent the past six years transcribing and decoding Logue's diaries. Broad came across them in the late 1990s while researching her PhD on stock routes and communication in the north of WA. She knew the Logues, having grown up in one of the prominent colonial families in the area – where 'everyone knows everyone'.
She's preparing to publish a version of the diaries this year.
'I knew it was very, very unique to have 50 years straight of a diary,' she says, adding that as a historian: 'I knew the value of the things.'
Wednesday Tom, Liffy and Bryant started at day break to gather the cattle found and got in 82 before breakfast after breakfast Bryant went to look for the others Thomson and [family] went home … told by Thomson that the [indecipherable] was at the Greenough looking for the cattle again
A N D T H A T H E A N D P A R T Y H A D S H O T 3 N A T I V E S T H E O T H E R D A Y A N D T H A T E G O I S A M O N G T H E N U M B E R
When she first saw the diaries about 30 years ago, they were in boxes under a bed. Their owner gave her access. When she began editing them for publication, the Geraldton library helped her to make copies so she could return the originals to their owner. This took a few days a week over the course of about a year.
But Broad says the publisher and the diaries' owner have decided to leave out all the sections in which Logue wrote about frontier killings.
'To protect the person who holds the diaries we felt it was … expedient, perhaps, to not have that in writing,' she says. 'Everyone knows what Major Logue did. Everyone knows what all the other settlers did.'
It is quite clear to Broad that he was writing about killing people – using a 'pathetically simple' code.
'He did the code, which is interesting, because he obviously felt guilt, I would suggest – it's only my interpretation of it. He felt guilt about it, and he knew the diaries were only a day-to-day thing on the farm, and I don't think he ever thought they would go any further.
'It was all just run of the mill. That's what we did. We went and dug holes for the fence there, and then we went over and we took those fellows out, and then we went back and milked the cow, or whatever we did. Rocks and she-oaks near Ellendale Pool, a grassy oasis on the Greenough River
'It was just part of the day, and he didn't go into the fact they'd been spearing this, or doing that, or doing something. There was no talk through the diary about that, just 'we did it'. It was just facts each time he did that.' 'Full of shame'
Logue used a modified form of masonic code known as 'pigpen'.
Guardian Australia combed through his diary page by page from 1850 to 1900 and hired a professional transcriber to detangle relevant passages of his handwriting. The diary entries in which he used code are reproduced here.
Chris Owen has studied Western Australian frontier history for 20 years. He wrote a book about policing on the WA frontier and was a researcher for the University of Newcastle's groundbreaking massacre map, published by the Guardian in 2019 in our Killing Times series.
Owen says he has read 'hundreds' of colonial diaries but has never seen the use of code before. Logue's diary is 'very, very unusual'.
'Shooting the blackfellas was pretty common, and getting them off the country for pinching a sheep or something,' he says. 'The British were watching this, going, 'You can't kill the blackfellas, they're British citizens, you can't just shoot them.' So the [settlers] learned how to leave it out completely. Just hide it from history.
'They wouldn't write things down that someone would read because even though Aboriginal people weren't really considered human, it was still murder.' A plaque at the campground at Bootenal Springs, with scratch marks over some of the phrases describing the massacre there
Owen says he is 'horrified' to hear that a version of the diary might be published with the coded entries omitted. 'It's just historical truth,' he says. 'It's not fabricated or anything. I'd leave it in, just run with it.'
He has his own theories as to why this decision has been made. 'I think they're full of shame that their ancestors did this, and they don't want their [ancestor's] reputation tarnished. I think that's the main reason, especially [among] the older generation. But it's important for truth-telling to just tell the story.' 'We prefer nothing to be in writing'
Geraldton is famously battered by fierce winds that blow in from the Indian Ocean. In the fields are stands of trees with their trunks bent double, almost horizontal to the earth, contorted by airborne salt blasting across the plains from the sea. One of the city's most famous sons, the author Randolph Stow – a descendant of the Logues – described them as stooped like 'women washing their hair'.
The soil here is heavy with sand. The invaders found this country difficult for cropping. Further inland, along the Greenough River, was more fertile land where an enterprising colonist could prosper.
Tucked away from the open country is Ellendale Pool, an oasis on the river. The waterhole is deep and serene, nestled at the base of a steep sandstone cliff, with a wide, sandy bank shaded by gumtrees, perfect for camping. The reed-fringed water of Ellendale Pool, which is sacred to the Yamatji people
Yamatji people hold this place sacred, where Bimarra the serpent rested on his journey from the ocean up the river all the way inland to Meekatharra.
When arriving at the water's edge, Yamatji people greet the ancestors and spirits by throwing a handful of soil into the water, to show respect and announce their presence.
They had been here for millennia. When Logue first saw the river in October 1850 he wrote about passing more than '200 native men … and though they had no spears they all had very formidable clubs'.
The sheep 'rushed wildly to the river [and] we set up camp with a crowd of natives watching on[.] Davis called to me to look out as the natives were inclined to be mischievous.'
He wrote he had cracked his whip at them, which sent 'those that were about the camp off' and they 'all collected on a hill to the south and watched us'.
Logue 'took up' about 400 hectares of this land, first with that whip and later with guns. He named it Ellendale in 1865 for his new wife, Lucy Ellen Shaw. By then there were no more accounts of groups of 'more than 200 natives' in his diaries – or anywhere. The killing was ruthlessly, brutally efficient. Logue became an important and influential pastoralist and politician.
Yamatji always knew about the 1854 massacre at Bootenal near Geraldton, where at least 30 Aboriginal people were killed by colonists. They say the real death toll was in the hundreds. Kehlani and Derek Councillor at Bootenal Springs
Even though Bootenal is not mentioned in Logue's diary, Broad says: 'Everyone knows they did it.' That massacre was led by John Nicol Drummond, Logue's brother-in-law.
'I mean, everyone knows up here that Logue shot them, and Logue would have been part of Bootenal,' Broad says. 'He would have been right in the front there, he was only just up the river, for goodness sake, he and probably his men.
'But there's nothing in writing, and we prefer nothing to be in writing.'
There were stories of other killings at Ellendale and at Walkaway, along the river – knowledge passed down in Yamatji families but always denied by settlers.
Logue's diaries now reveal those stories to be true. ****
Derek and Theona Councilor are cousins who grew up in their Naaguja Yamatji country learning the stories passed down by their elders. Theona is a poet and writer. Derek conducts cultural tours of the region including the Bootenal massacre site.
They are both quietly spoken, thoughtful people, and welcome us into their home in Geraldton for a yarn around the kitchen table.
There's a significance in how many of my recent ancestors were born out here and what their prosperity cost in the blood spilled ... I feel immensely privileged to have been asked to care
Moss Logue Naaguja elders Edna Corbett, Peta Watkins and Avriel Maher with Margaret Jones, born Criddle, at the Bootenal Springs campground
Theona says many descendants of settler families still aren't able to face up to the past but it's not for her to tell them how. They have to come to terms in their own way, in their own time, she says, but the truth is long overdue.
'Stop clinging to the silence,' she says. 'Stop clinging to a false narrative and say, 'OK, this, what we claim as history, could be true – but you were there with us, the black people were there too. So let's add the black history in there, and be brave enough to hear it.'
'Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe they'll get a medal for telling the truth. I don't know. I really don't know. Release it. Release themselves. We're releasing ourselves.
'The blood called out to us. So we're telling this story, we're writing these songs. We're singing our songs again. I'm releasing myself.'
Theona and Derek reach out to the descendants on the 'other side of the shield' to bring understanding, not pain.
'I wouldn't want them to feel the way we felt, and I wouldn't want them to suffer what we suffered, living in reservations and tin sheds … just so basic, simply because we're black,' she says.
'Maybe there could be something good now because we're black. Truth-telling because we're black. Recompense because we're black. It's always been a negative. I would like to see it as a positive.'
Despite these hardships, Theona says she doesn't hate anyone for the way her people have been treated. 'I just want my children and my grandchildren to have equal standing. No more standing at the back, no more last in line to get something. We are side by side now.
'I think then we truly could be a great nation. Great because it's not afraid of the truth. Great because they don't leave anybody behind, don't earn riches on someone else's back, steal someone's inheritance and give it to their own children.' 'They knew not to write it all down'
All around Geraldton there are sites named for the perpetrators of the Bootenal massacre: Criddle Road, Drummond Cove. Descendants of other colonial families still occupy neighbouring properties. They are intermarried. As Nan Broad says, everybody knows everybody.
Ellendale is still held by the Logue family, 175 years later. Ellendale Pool remained their private property until the 1960s when the council took ownership of it for public use. Today it's a popular tourist spot, home to a gang of screeching corellas hanging from every tree. There is a sign that warns you not to swim, for fear of amoebic meningitis. Another sign tells you the history of the site. It mentions Randolph Stow. Goats fight for a high point on the ruins of a colonial homestead near Perenjori
It does not tell you what the pool means to Yamatji people. It does not tell you what it cost them.
Yes, let's get over it. Just tell it right. Tell it truthfully first. You can't get over something if you don't even know what happened
Theona Councillor
Major Logue has descendants who do want to break the silence and face the truth.
We drive out to a property near Perenjori, three and a half hours into the WA wheatbelt, to meet one of Logue's great-grandsons.
Phil Logue and his family have been to Bootenal Springs and attended the 170th anniversary of the massacre last August. He has not seen the diaries but does not doubt the family history, and he strongly supports the truth coming out.
'If this is an indication of what happened everywhere, in WA, South Australia, Queensland, wherever, well, it's going to be fairly hard truth-telling,' he says. 'It's not an isolated incident. Because we learnt, the wadjulas [white people] learnt, not to document it, or to hide it.
'You'll find that this area here [Western Australia] was the last one settled, and because this area was the last one settled, they knew not to write it all down. They learnt from what happened through Queensland and the flak that they were getting from back home, back in England. Don't write it down but keep doing it.'
He says the way stories are passed down among non-Indigenous families is different. Secrets are held, or written down, whereas in Aboriginal culture, stories are sung and shared across generations. Phil Logue and his son Moss Logue at a farm outside Perenjori
'I didn't know,' he says. 'Dad died 20 years ago, but he was only the grandson. He never told me.
'We don't sing the stories down the line. If it's not written, we don't see it, and if it's written, it disappears in 20 years with silverfish or hidden in [someone's] back yard. Or it's edited, cleansed. You cleanse the story, and you tell the good bits.'
Phil says it was only in the past few years that he heard the 'nitty gritty' of what his ancestor had done. 'At the time, I wasn't living here, and it didn't mean a lot. Those things were just history. But now they're not. It's a little bit closer to home.'
Moss Logue is sitting with their father, proudly part of a younger generation of descendants prepared to talk about the past and come to terms with it.
'There's a consequence to doing this,' they say. 'And when it's not faced, it carries on in the bloodline. There's a significance in how many of my recent ancestors were born out here and what their prosperity cost in the blood spilled.
'It's an honour, in a really strange sense, to offer grief and be willing to feel it. I feel immensely privileged, in a very weird way, to have been asked to care and to heed the call.' 'Give them the truth'
Derek and Theona say they will keep telling the story. Those who wish to listen are always welcome. On the day we visit Bootenal Springs with the descendants of both sides, Theona has her grandchildren with her. They listen intently while seeming not to, the way children do, as Derek recounts what happened when the white men burst through the she-oaks in military formation, armed to the teeth, giving people nowhere to run.
Everywhere in Australia where people were massacred, there is unfinished business. The land holds the truth of this destruction, just as it holds all the stories of beauty and creation, of what Theona calls the genius of her people. It's important to tell them all, sing them all. Side by side. Elders Peta Watkins, Edna Corbett, Theo Councillor and Avriel Maher with Theona's daughter and grandchildren at Bootenal Springs
'You're not teaching the children anything if you don't give them the truth, you know,' she says.
And it's time for non-Indigenous people to listen.
'Why do they get to become an adult before they hear adult stuff?' she asks. 'They say, 'It happened so long ago. Get over it.'
'Yes, let's get over it. Just tell it right. Tell it truthfully first. You can't get over something if you don't even know what happened.'
Alongside Theona and Derek, descendants from the 'other side of the shield' are breaking the silence of their ancestors. They are working for change, for truth, for reckoning. They are responding with art and writing to a deeply messy and confronting legacy, turning the anguish of the past into creative inspiration.
Some collaborated on the Museum of Geraldton's Silence Listening exhibition, featuring work by the Yamatji poet Charmaine Papertalk Green and the artist and colonial descendant George Criddle.
Moss Logue recorded a piece of writing for the show. In it they recalled their first visit to Ellendale Pool as an eight-year-old, of imagining a peaceful swimming spot and instead being 'unmoored' to find an 'eerie oasis'. George Criddle looks out over land near Ellendale Pool
'Major Logue committed cruelty and malice against Indigenous Australians and, as a consequence, got to name the land he stole after the woman he loved.'
Moss wrote that they had long felt trapped beside their ancestors' 'soulless graves' and praised the 'tireless truth-telling' of Indigenous Australians.
Breaking the silence about that bloody past is 'the strangest, most hallowed privilege of my life', they wrote.
'It is the reason I don't sit at their graves holding the violence behind my teeth, and why I have stopped dreaming of it.' ****
Guardian Australia tried over several weeks to interview the owner of Logue's diaries. In several private conversations, the owner spoke about them and Logue family history but declined to comment publicly.
In one communication with Guardian Australia, they said they had destroyed the originals. Other local landowning families did that long ago, they said. Potentially incriminating – and historically significant – records were thrown down wells and burnt.
Nan Broad says she doesn't believe the diaries have been destroyed but the claim is illustrative of fears among some descendants that they may face consequences for crimes of the past.
'I suppose we are trying to hide something,' she says. 'We're trying to hide the written word from future repercussions. And when you think deeply, there could be … And we don't want future problems, and we just don't want it in writing.'
Broad later says she thinks Australia is 'too close' to colonisation to reckon with the full truth: 'It's not old history yet to be looked at dispassionately.'
Peter Bridge, whose small imprint Hesperian Press is publishing the diaries, rejects the suggestion that the code was being omitted to hide the truth. He says the coded sentences are 'in unique characters' and adds: 'They are not omitted – they are simply unprintable.' The locations of the omitted sections 'will be clearly indicated' in the forthcoming book.
'Our edition makes no attempt to deceive, suppress, or editorialise; rather, we have published a primary document, faithfully and unflinchingly, as is our usual method,' he says in a written statement to Guardian Australia.
'If your concern is that the code may conceal politically potent material – I suggest that you take that up with Logue himself, who is, unfortunately, unavailable for an interview. We publish the diaries because they are historical documents, not a moral confession.' A dead tree stands prominently on a lookout point overlooking a salt lake on a farm just outside Perenjori
Bridge's latest booklist, published in July 2025, includes descriptions of historical works using outdated and racist language. He argued in a recent book that reports of Aboriginal 'criminal matters' have been minimised by 'our masters' and tells Guardian Australia he answers to 'history, not hashtags'. He also accuses the Western Australian Museum of censorship for refusing to stock his books.
'We do not censor our findings,' he says. 'By publishing Real History, and especially accurate aboriginal history and culture we have upset some mainstream media, the WA Museum, the National and State libraries, and other degenerating institutions.'
Broad says she supports truth-telling – just not in the published version of the diaries. 'It's got to come out,' she says. 'And I want you people doing what you're doing to really ramp it up. So the good part of it, let's get on with it. Let's get together, and work. Please push it hard. Push it hard and get people like us talking.'
• Indigenous Australians can call 13YARN on 13 92 76 for information and crisis support; or call Lifeline on 13 11 14, Mensline on 1300 789 978 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636
• Lorena Allam is a professor at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous research at the University of Technology Sydney Credits
Reporting: Sarah Collard, Lorena Allam and Ella Archibald-Binge
Photography: Tamati Smith
Design and development: Nick Evershed, Andy Ball and Victoria Hart
Handwriting transcription: Transcription Services Ltd
Editing and production: Calla Wahlquist, Lucy Clark and Nikki Marshall
With thanks to the State Library of Western Australia Supported by